


keep the light burning

by brecht



Category: The AM Archives (Podcast), The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Comfort No Hurt, F/M, Missing Scene, Sibling Incest, mild jealousy, references to canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 21:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20646014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brecht/pseuds/brecht
Summary: “Can I ask you a dumb question?” Mark says when he’s scrubbing out the blood between her fingers.





	keep the light burning

Joan’s in the women’s bathroom on the third floor when Mark finds her. It’s the point equidistant from Alex's room and from Tier Five, as far away from anyone else as she could get. She’s sitting on the floor in front of the row of sinks, and Owen’s blood is drying on her skin.

He pauses in the doorway with a question on his face; this isn’t where she belongs. 

“I—Ellie told me to get cleaned up while she—she's taking care of—of the—” she stops. Takes a deep breath. Her hands are shaking. 

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” Mark says, and fully enters the room. The door swings shut softly behind him. “You don’t have to talk about it. Let me just—” 

He rips off a sheet of paper towel, folds it into the shape of a washcloth, and wets it in one of the sinks. Joan keeps her eyes towards her feet. There are flecks of blood on her nylons, which have somehow survived the day without any other damage. Her shoes are practically spotless, the black surface incongruously polished and shiny. She kicks them off. 

“Here,” he says. He kneels down next to her and gently starts wiping at her face. Her skin feels sticky and stiff, and she doesn’t know how much of it is from the blood and how much is from her tears and how much is from the exhaustion and fear that had seeped from her every pore. 

He’s still wearing the hospital gown. Still wearing the spot bandaid on his arm where he’d been injected with the serum. It's absurd for him to be taking care of her while he still has that awful venom in his veins, eating him from the inside out. 

Mark tracks her gaze. He frowns, not at the bandaid but at what he must know she's thinking. 

“Close your eyes,” he says, and she could collapse with gratitude for the way the command comes wrapped around implicit permission to let her anger go for the time being.

She nods and takes another deep breath. 

The towel is coarse, and the rough texture helps keep her in her skin as he methodically makes his way down each side of her face, then down her neck and to her collar. The whole front of her shirt’s soaked straight through with the blood, so there’s not much point trying to get it off her skin there. 

He wets a new towel and repeats the process on her arms, then gets another for her hands.

“Can I ask you a dumb question?” Mark says when he’s scrubbing out the blood between her fingers. 

Joan shrugs without opening her eyes. 

“I know it doesn’t matter, but it’s still—” he cuts off, laughs at himself quietly. “After you yelled at me earlier, when you took that Jackson guy out into the hall...did you kiss him?” 

It’s not a dumb question, and it’s not unimportant, but it’s somehow unexpected. It’s a question from another era. No one but Mark has ever been that straightforward with her about something like this, and it’s been so long since there was anyone for him to even ask about. 

“No,” she says, shifting on the hard tile floor. “I, um, I thought about it, but he wasn’t...”

He wasn’t you. 

“Good,” Mark says, and she opens her eyes now, finally, just so she can see his quiet smile. God, it feels like it’s been years. “I was—” 

_ Worried_ is the word she watches him swallow down. 

He’s not really cleaning her up anymore, just holding her hands loosely. He traces the lines on one of her palms. 

He says, “Sometimes you make bad choices when you’re angry with me.” 

She raises her eyebrows. “And Jackson is a bad choice?”

Mark leans closer, watching carefully for her reaction to his nearness. “When _ I’m _here?” he asks, and then he expounds upon the question by pressing his lips to hers. 

She tilts her head up, the better to reach him, to drink him in. It really has been so many years since she’s had this—it’s been since before the first time she lost him—but every movement, every sensation is so familiar. The kiss is unhurried, almost languid, like they have all the time in the world to reacquaint themselves with this intimacy. 

Not that anything’s changed, really. She’s always had Mark in her skin, in her bones; she’s not a full person without him.

He pulls away half an inch, resting his forehead against hers, and they share a long, quiet moment of breathing each other in. 

“Are you, though?” she has to ask. “Here?” 

“Yes,” he breathes. “If you’ll let me. I—leaving was a mistake. I’ve always belonged wherever you are, you know that.” 

He brings one of his hands up to messily brush her hair back, stroking her face with his thumb. “Please, Joanie,” he says. “Let me stay?”

And the deepest truth is he’s right; she couldn’t possibly choose anything else, choose anyone else. Not when she could have him. Who else could ever know her like he does, could ever take care of her like he will, could ever comfort her this strongly with just their presence?

“Yes, Mark, of course—” is all she gets out before he’s kissing her again, breathing life back into her lungs.

Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe it’s another item on the long list of fuckups she’s committed today. Certainly it’s selfish, the way she’d do anything to keep him in her life, to be able to know everyday that he’s safe.

Indisputably it’s wrong, the way she’s always needed him like she’s never needed anything else. She’s never been able to make herself regret it before, though; she probably won’t start now. 

“Good,” Mark says again but under his breath this time, a sigh of relief at her consent.

“I’m still upset with you,” she says, but she isn’t really. 

“I know, Joanie,” he says, and he does. “But c’mon. You can yell at me again after we get you home.”


End file.
